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Re: THEORY: Irish, and language death

From:Aquamarine Demon <aquamarine_demon@...>
Date:Friday, June 20, 2003, 19:42
>>I would respectfully have to disagree. Here is what Robert D. King has
to say about Irish in the Linguistic Prolegomena to his study of the language politics of India: "Earlier, before the 18th century, most inhabitants of Ireland spoke Irish. Sometime between 1750 and 1850 a wholesale transfer to English, the language of the island's rulers, began. By 1851, when the first census to take language into account was held, only some 5% of the population described themselves as monolingual Irish speakers; 23 per cent said they were bilingual in Irish and English." (p. 32, "Nehru and the Language Politics of India") That would seem to put it right around 1800. The reason is quite straightforward: it is only with the extremest rarity that a government policy is ever able substantially to change linguistic behavior; it usually requires physically pointing a gun at someone's head before they will willingly change. The language reforms under Atatürk in Turkey are the usually cited example, but many more could be produced. Almost always, short of genocide, the impetus behind language death is economic motive to improve one's every-day well-being.<< I don't dispute that. The language restrictions placed on the Irish people by the British quite possibly restricted monolingual Irish speakers economically, though.
>>Equally, language revitalization programs almost always fail, because
the people meant to "reacquire" (i.e., acquire for the first time) their ancestral tongue usually have a much easier alternative available which will work for all their daily needs. In the case of the Irish, it was English. Hebrew is an exception to the general trend, and it is (to oversimply somewhat) a result of having no one other language which all Jews in Palestine could easily pick up without going to great lengths (though note that it is in many ways a new language, not at all like that of King David).<< Again, I can't argue against this. My only point, really, was that Ireland began its downhill journey of losing its native tongue earlier than 1800, both because of government policies. I also said that the main loss of Irish speakers came from the Potato Famine, from death or emmigration. In the case of emmigration, their language loss most definitely came from economic factors, as they emmigrated to English-speaking countries. (Of course, that was assuming they could actually get a job.) Noelle __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month! http://sbc.yahoo.com

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Thomas R. Wier <trwier@...>